History of the earldoms of Strathern, Monteith, and Airth

54" HISTORY OF THE EARLDOMS
William acknowledging any subject to be equal in blood
SEVENTH Earl , . m,, i
OF MoNTEiTH. to himselt. '
It is impossible to attach due weight to those
Propositions and to the Answers to them, with-
out bearing in mind that the status of King
Robert the Second's children by Elizabeth Muir
was then a matter of extreme dehcacy. The
learned triumvirate, by asserting that King
Robert's marriage with Euphemia Ross was his
first marriage, shewed their disbelief of his pre-
vious marriage with Elizabeth Muir, and thus
threw great doubt on the right, by birth, of His
Majesty's ancestor. King j^obert the Third, to
the Throne.
The expression " equal in blood" seems to
have been used in an equivocal sense, and its
true meaning would rather appear to be *' supe-
rior in blood," because all the descendants (who
were then very numerous) of any child of King
Robert the Second, or of the child of any sub-
sequent King of Scotland, were *' equal in
blood" to King Charles the First, though no
jealousy was felt respecting their descent from
the Blood Royal. Unless, however. King Ro-
bert the Second's issue by Elizabeth Muir were
illegitimate, or ought to have been postponed in
the succession to his children by Euphemia
1 Sir John Scot's " True Relation," Appendix, No. IX.
pp. xxxiii.xxxiv.